There
by Chapstickie
Summary: He doesn't deserve this. He's sure he doesn't.


This is a story I wrote forever ago for a LJ challenge. I thought I should get it up here since no one uses LJ anymore. I hope you enjoy it!

**Disclaimer:** This work is based on characters and concepts created and owned by DC Comics, Warner Bros. and other entities and corporations. No money is being made and no copyright and/or trademark infringement is intended.

He knows the moment he gets his room assignment that he is going to die. There will be no hope of freedom, no re-evaluation of his sanity. No one is going to look for the evidence that would prove he isn't (wasn't?) crazy. He is simply going to die. Surely there has been some kind of mistake. He hadn't hurt anyone besides himself. He hadn't caused any trouble besides maybe to the man in the apartment below his when the bath water in his locked bathroom (the things locked inside would escape if he opened the door) started leaking through the floor. He just hadn't wanted them to get out and hurt him and now he is going to die for it anyway. Maybe it would have been better to just let them have him. What are they thinking locking a perfectly sane if unfortunate man up with that lunatic?

He's never seen the man before except in newspaper pictures and a few times live from the scenes of his crimes but he can't help but find his face almost comfortably familiar. Sure the lines and colors are all wrong (how can he be so white?) and he's going to kill him (hopefully quickly) but in his panic even the face of his killer comforts more than the blank looks of the guards. He'd asked them for another room as they escorted him to the place of his death but they hadn't seemed to be listening. Now their attention is all on the Joker, watching his every movement for the intention to attack them. But the Joker isn't looking at them and obeys their orders to stand against the wall and not move. He doesn't move except to tap out a little song on the wall with his index finger. Still, they don't leave the door open for long.

The weeks in Arkham pass slowly. The drugs they give make everything swim tantalizingly out of reach. Thoughts that would have been easy to understand baffle him in their complexity. Every moment feels like trying to read a book when he's too tired to think. Thoughts float through his head just to come back again and again, never making any more sense. On the rare occasions the cell doors are opened for anything besides a meal, the patients who are obviously really inmates can do little more than sit quietly like they would in their cells, never forging friendships or hatred through the haze of drug-addled minds. Food seems to perk them up a little but never for long and the debates that sometimes bubble up in the dining hall fade away once the trays have been collected.

Only the Joker's face still seems clear. His eyes are bright and his movements are quick. He paces nearly constantly, muttering under his breath a tirade against the people of Gotham and ignoring his cowering cell-mate. Their interactions are limited, something to be thankful for. It seems the Joker lives in his own world far away from the asylum and the man finds himself feeling a little jealous of it at times. He picks up the Joker's pacing habit hesitantly and is amazed how it clears his mind. One terrifying day their paths cross in the tiny cell and the Joker nearly trips over him. He catches the falling madman by the shoulder and bangs his elbow hard on the corner of his bed for his trouble. The Joker doesn't say thank you and the elbow throbs for days. He doesn't pace anymore.

The Joker sleeps and the Asylum sleeps with him.

One day Batman visits the asylum in the middle of the night. He and the Joker have a rushed and whispered conversation through the barred window. There is anger on both sides of the conversation. The Batman wants to know something and the Joker won't give him the information he demands. Neither notice the man in bed with his eyes squeezed tight pretending to be asleep. He doesn't see Batman's hand snake through the bars to touch the Joker's face for a fleeting second before he turns and disappears into the shadows that surround the asylum. He would swear to hell and back that he doesn't.

That night the Joker's mad laughter fills the asylum hallways and the inmates who can sleep through it do so restlessly and with bad dreams. He lays awake and listens to the whispers that break up the Joker's laughter. The only word that makes it through the exhaustion into his mind is Batman. Somehow the word seems reverent, like the name of a god. He isn't surprised.

A week later the inevitable happens. The Joker makes his move soon after nightfall (Batman will be out) with explosives that he seems to have conjured out of no where. Arkham's walls are much patched and repaired from similar escape attempts in the past, but they still crumble when faced with the Joker's will, somehow left to him by the drugs that dull all the others. He doesn't look at his cellmate who sleeps pressed tightly against the wall that stands between him and his Bat and the man doesn't dare move and risk alerting the guards to the Joker's actions. He'll move when he is told to move and not before.

And as the final stones of Arkham's outer wall fall to crush him into the cold thin mattress, he knows that he is going to die. He is going to die and the man who killed him not only won't care but probably won't ever know. After all, he's very busy saving Gotham from itself and wouldn't know anything about the causalities of the war he fights against the Joker, wouldn't know how the Clown Prince doesn't notice anything but him, doesn't care about anything but him. To The Joker, all that exists is his Batman and the fights they both need from each other, the desire for combat that no man and certainly no asylum wall could stand up against. How could Batman be expected to notice his name on the list of people the Joker has killed to be near him? A single Arkham patient crushed in the escape that would bring them together again? How would he ever know?

All these thoughts float hypnotically in front of his eyes in the confusion of the Joker's escape. He's barely clinging to consciousness as guard after guard runs past him without so much as looking in his direction. He's not a part of this. He never was a part of it. He'd heard the truth on the Joker's lips over and over again.

"I'm coming, Batman."


End file.
